“Each one of you shall be saved, and will be saved. I shall not give you up, even if you keep afar. I shall not forsake even those who deny me, I have come for all.” Sai Baba quoted by Kasturi in Sathyam, Sivam, Sundaram, Vol. 2, p 21)
“The aeroplane has to land at certain places in order to take in those who have won the right to fly, by the tickets they have purchased. So too, the Lord has to come down so that those who have won the right to be liberated may be saved…” (Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 3, p. 30)
The two assurances given above stand in stark contrast to each other. One says all will be saved, the other only those who ‘have a ticket’. Promises of his “divine protection” are made by him freely and often sweepingly in interviews and also in discourses about looking after every life problem of all who put their faith in him. This promise necessarily involve, in his stated view, that one should not die in an accident or any other inaspicious way (especially suicide).
To what extent does the evidence back up these ‘divine assurances’? This is a moot question, and it is one that people long to believe is always fulfilled. When it is not, they stake their faith on it being fulfilled when they die! Nonetheless, he does not protect his devotees as he constantly claims to do. Even the adulatory literature contains references to instances of this, but experience has taught me that many instances are not talked about in the strongly self-censored books about Sathya Sai Baba.
It is now common knowledge that there have been a considerable number of suicides due to Sathya Sai Baba’s not keeping his word. For example, Dominic Kennedy wrote in The Times (27/8/01) of three British followers of Sathya Sai Baba who took their own lives: “an investigation by The Times today discloses that three British men have apparently taken their own lives after becoming followers of the miracle worker. Two of them were encouraged to believe that he could cure their medical problems. One of those also said that he had been touched intimately by the Sai Baba.”
Two Indian women devotees of Sathya Sai Baba committed suicide in Bangalore [2001] after Sai Baba did not give them darshan (i.e. let them see him in person), according to their suicide note. Further, on 4-12-1998, after Sai Baba’s assurances had been broken, a whole family of five at the ashram were poisoned by the father (and few survived).
Numerous ladies have taken their own lives due to disappointments, some in the ashram itself. Others have been murdered (one such, a German-speaking lady of reported Swiss nationality was killed not long after my wife and I met her at Prashanthi Nilayam. Her killers were released by the police after some weeks in return for the Rs. 80,000.- they had killed her for). Other names who dies in horrible accidents include several students (killed in a car crash en route to Bangalore), Mrs. Barbara Sinclair died in a taxi head-on crash with a lorry on the way to visits Sai Baba at his request! The son of Datuk J. Jegathesan – a favourite of Sai Baba, according to his father, jumped to his death from a 5-storey building in Malaysia. The list goes on and on…
To be continued…
See also Sai Baba’s promises of ‘liberation’ (from the wheel of existence etc.)
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 